Treehouse furnishes a one-stop shop for solar

Treehouse furnishes a one-stop shop for solar

Few people walk into a car dealership and ask to see all of the 2.0 liter engines or only the 200 horsepower cars. Those technical specs are important, but most people shop by model, price or features.

Yet homeowners that want to install solar panels often find themselves buried in a mound of technical details that are not only confusing, but intimidating. And expensive. Austin, Texas-based sustainable living retailer Treehouse is changing that and proving that energy innovation is sometimes less about technology and policy and more about thinking like customers.

"The solar industry has done a great job educating people about the benefits of solar energy," said Treehouse founder and president Jason Ballard. "But it's done a bad job of making solar easy to buy."

So Ballard and his team went to work finding out what was keeping people from buying solar (complexity and up-front cost) and eliminating these barriers.

"We started by talking like customers, not engineers. We made solar dead simple. And then we made it free," he said.

The first step was designing a solar product that "regular" people could understand without becoming solar experts. Instead of talking about kilowatts, panel efficiency and installation fees, Treehouse created products based on square footage of available roof space.

"We use the best panels, inverters and installation hardware on the market so customers don't have to think about that, and we wrap up all installation costs into a fixed fee," Ballard said.

Treehouse's solar options range from a small 210-square foot system (3.12 kW, for those that speak solar) all the way up to an extra-large 555-square foot system (8.32 kW). All size kits use the same top-of-the-line panels, inverters and installation hardware and come with a multi-year warranty.

The second step was tackling up-front costs, which can be insurmountable obstacles for even die-hard solar enthusiasts.

Ballard's answer: Zero-down, 2.99 percent financing from Utah-based EnerBank monthly payments lower than the energy savings the systems will generate and a payoff period of 7-12 years.